Rebecca Barr

How schools work

As budgets tighten for school districts, a sound understanding of just how teaching and administration translate into student learning becomes increasingly important. Rebecca Barr, a researcher of classroom instruction and reading skill development, and Robert Dreeben, a sociologist of education who analyzes the structure of organizations, combine their expertise to explore the social organization of schools and classrooms, the division of labor, and the allocation of key resources. Viewing schools as part of a social organization with a hierarchy of levels-district, school, classroom, instructional group, and students-avoids the common pitfalls of lumping together any and all possible influences on student learning without regard to the actual processes of the classroom. Barr and Dreeben systematically explain how instructional groups originate, form, and change over time. Focusing on first grade reading instruction, their study shows that individual reading aptitude actually has little direct relation to group reading achievement and virtually none to the coverage of reading materials once the mean aptitude of groups is taken into consideration. Individual aptitude, they argue, is rather the basis on which teachers form reading groups that are given different instructional treatment. It is these differences in group treatment, they contend, that explain substantial differences in learning curricular material.

Classroom Composition and the Design of Instruction.

Studies of structural effects in education have usually attributed normative or comparative reference-group meaning to school composition. The results of such studies show that variation among students in schools accounts for only modest amounts of aspiration and achievement. This study of elementary school classrooms and instructional groups departs from the familiar formulations and shows how school systems successively transform the composition of schools, grades, and classes as part of a process of allocating and using resources. It shows how the difficulty of classes, an indication of composition, constrains the composition of instructional groups, the instruction applied to them, and the learning of individuals.

3: Instruction in Classrooms

There are two traditions of research on school effects that have developed and remain in almost complete isolation from each other. First, there is a classroom instruction tradition consisting of a large and inconclusive literature on the impact of instruction upon learning. Long before anyone misinterpreted the Coleman Report of 1966 as showing that schools have no effect on achievement, there was ample evidence that the research on classrooms has little to say about the connection between what teachers do and what students learn. Second, a more recent tradition dating to the Coleman Report examines school effects using a quasi-production function formulation to examine the connections between school resources and achievement. We will argue not only that the two traditions have a connection but that the agenda addressed by one is integral to the agenda addressed by the other. Whatever the inadequacies of past work, the study of the impact of classroom instruction on learning (or achievement) is directly relevant to the application of production function models to schooling. In the production function literature the sources of within-school variation have either been ignored or handled improperly. Moreover, the more complete understanding of the macrosocial aspects of schools and school systems will surely contribute to better understanding of how classrooms work and students learn.

Preparing Teachers to Teach Literacy: Rethinking Preservice Literacy Education

Editorial Assistants Mariko Ventura Vince Caputi NATIONAL-LOUIS UNIVERSITY We were delighted to have the opportunity to guest edit this special issue of JLR devoted to literacy education for preservice teachers. When editors David Reinking, Cyndie Hynd, and Donna Alvermann solicited suggestions for a themed issue at meetings of the JLR editorial reviewboard and the NRC publications committee, as well as on the NRC listserv, the topic of teacher education emerged far more than any other. Indeed, there are a number of reasons preservice teacher education is currently a hot topic. To situate this volume within a broad frame, we present two contexts for the recent interest in preservice teacher education.

The Formation and Instruction of Ability Groups.

Based on an analysis of first-grade reading instruction, in which the nature of the curriculum, the allocation of time, the class distribution of student aptitude, and learning are the main considerations, this article provides evidence that teaching contains important technological elements. These elements can be formulated as principles expressing coherent connections between means and ends; they pervade school-system organization and are not restricted to classes. The argument questions the view that teaching is largely intuitive, unpredictable, and resistant to analysis.

An Organizational Analysis of Curriculum and Instruction

The purpose of this chapter is to treat the curriculum as part of school system organization and to establish its link to the technology of instruction. It will not deal with individual achievement or with the connection between schools and society but rather will address the question of how the curriculum can be seen as an organizational force, hitherto neglected, that drives the school’s technology—classroom instruction.

Classroom Reading Instruction from a Sociological Perspective

Children learn what they are taught may be dismissed simply as a truism. But like many contentions that appear obvious, this one bears further scrutiny. In this paper, the nature of content coverage is considered and the empirical evidence on the relationship between what children cover and what they learn is examined. Is content coverage a condition that can be independently manipulated or is it connected with other conditions of classroom instruction? Finally, the implications of this research for practice and for thinking about how schools work is discussed.

Influence of Reading Materials on Response to Printed Words.

Beginning reading materials differ considerably in the characteristics of words included in stories. While many reading texts are characterized by a limited number of words that vary in length and pattern, reading materials for phonics or linguistic instruction tend to contain a greater number of words that are similar in length and pattern. Examination of materials indicates that those with particular characteristics support learning by particular methods. This investigation explores the effect of word characteristics in reading materials on childrens responses to printed words.

Growing with the Times

sity of such a committee prevailed, and as a result, a subcommittee of approximately eight board members was appointed to study the situation. As a member of that subcommittee, I recall a series of conversations on E-mail that focused on the need for a committee whose aim was to open J L R up intellectual spaces for perspectives, populations, and methodologies that Presidential could conceivably make NRC a more diverse and representative organizaRetrospectives tion. After 4 months of communicating via the listserv, members of the subcommittee recommended that the board approve the formation of the Committee on Critical Spaces, which it did at its next semiannual meeting in Orlando. The charges to the newly formed committee included providing the NRC community with information on critical literacy research, alternative methodologies, and more generally, the issues surrounding what counts as research. The primary vehicles for disseminating such information were the NRC Newsletter and the annual conference.

Editorial Response to Survey Results

Finally, surveys have their limitations and this one is no exception. Two limitations are apparent with regard to the format of this survey: (1) the satisfaction items may not have made sense to some respondents, as many chose not to respond to those items, and (2) the one ambiguous item that separated literacy, writing, and oracy research cannot be clearly interpreted. Another limitation not controlled by the committee was the number of members who responded to the survey. One hundred twenty respondents out of the total NRC membership is a small sample. Members must be reminded that their views need to be voiced if they are to be heard.